Step 1: Acquire a catfish

Get yourself a catfish. There are several methods:

1. Catch your own. Juglines/trotlines are a good way to catch these bottom-feeders; just make sure you're not fishing in a polluted or heavy-metal laden waterway. Each US state has its own report on this subject.2. Get one from friends who fish, but usually catch-and-release because they're scared of cleaning fish. Bass fishermen are great for this; my uncle only keeps his fish when I come to visit.3. Buy a live one. If you have a good Chinatown, farmers' market, or live near a fish farm, this may be easy. It's sad that you're missing out on a nice day at the lake or the river, but at least you have a live fish. This ~2.5lb fish came from the Old Oakland Farmers' Market. I was in line behind a bunch of tiny asian grandmothers waiting to buy live catfish.4. Buy a dead one. This is a total cop-out, but sometimes the only option. Fishmongers and grocery stores standardly sell fillets, but good ones may sell you whole fish for waaaaay cheaper. Sometimes they're even pre-skinned for you. Note that "basa" is catfish from Thailand forcibly renamed by the US government.

Step 2: Kill it

If you're starting out with a live catfish, congratulations! You know your food will be fresh. There are many ways to put the little guy out of his misery before you begin, but pithing is sure to do the trick. Whacking him on the head will certainly stun the fish and probably kill him, but is more about preventing the human from feeling squeamish.

To pith your catfish, position the pointy part of a big knife directly above its brain and spinal cord, then quickly push down into the brain cavity. This is about as quick and painless as euthanasia gets.

This guy made a mess of this , it can be done with 2 cuts straight down the side from the behind the head with a fillet knife before you get to the very end flip the fillet over with the knife in 1 sweeping cut and fillet the skin off for a 2 cut fillet , flip and do it again on the other side , with almost 0 mess and no worrying about guts or anything

hey canida, i'm certainly referring to this 'ible next time i decide to keep one of the catfish

i'm a bass fisherwoman mostly (living right next to a river!) and the closest thing to a pest we have is catfish ours are big, brown, slimy creatures that smell terrible! i've found it hard to clean them due to their strong skin and bones and they are near impossible to keep hold of!

seems to me you have a very bloody fix there, i read were you leave the tail on to me that's a no no cut the sucker off let it bleed for 5 min's or so then fillet the meat off bone flip it over tilt knife a bit hold end of skin with skinning pliers and pull skin while pushing with other hand. that's all there is to it.

I have fished cats for a long time, when landing that bugger I always get finned by the top fin on the back. Sting like a bee. To get rid of the sting, rub the catfishes belly on the spot, some reason it helps. Just incase tidbit for newbies to the fishing world.

Great Instructable! Thanks so much for putting step 2 in there. I used to do a lot of fishing and the majority of anglers that I saw, never killed the fish before cleaning it. It just made sick watching someone treat a beautiful fish that way. We used a small bat made for bonking the fish in the head and killing it (the trout we caught were much easier to kill than catfish) before cleaning.

man we have always cleaned our fish alive. By the time we got 'em home they were still alive, so we just cut the two side filets off and toss em out in the wood's, normally still alive after we're done cleanin.

try this next time ,I worked in a seafood house for a while and this is how we do it.Do not cut around the head first,this sometimes makes the meat tear off in chunks.. That little v shaped bone just behind the two side fins, using catfish skinning pliers,grab that with the skinning pliers,get a good bite then bend upwards.the bone will break then pull directly down.do on both sides then grab any leftover and pull down until it skins even the tail.cut off the dorsal fin,If done right there should be a v shaped piece of skin on both the belly and the back behind the head grab onto those one at a time and pull upwards over its head .Then cut off the head behind the two side fins and gut out. My family loves the fried tails. if fileting,start at tail next to backbone on one side and follow backbone up to the rib cage then bring knife up out of meat.Do on both sides then next to spine above rib cage slice down to rib cage and out this will give a small filet on both sides. i save the back bone beacuse it still has a lot of meat and fry that when frying the filets

I live in the south. The only way i was ever taught to skin catfish was to hang the fish up by the gills. make the first cut behind the head as you did. then take a pair of skinning pliers and grasp the dorsel fin and pull downward. this will remove the majority of the skin from the back. then go back to the sides. grasp the skin and pull downward. and repeat the process as nedded. i can clean any catfish fron 1lbs all the way 42lbs in the same manor and do it in less than 2 minutes each.

EXACTLY, man alive I'd hate to see this guy clean a mess of cats... I caught 80 something last weekend, shoot, i'da been cleaning for a week at his rate.Caught a 40 pound flat and had him dressed and filleted in about 5 minutescourse, Ive been doing it most of my life, and I do it for extra money, IE I sell fish at work, and typically cover the cost of my gear fuel etc and still put money in my pocket.For anyone reading this, get a metal coat hanger, a pair of needle nose vise grips if you do not have access to skinning pliers, run the coat hanger though the gills out the mouth, and hang him about eye level on something very sturdy. Grab the tail and cut it off completely at the end of the spine. (this drains the blood and keeps the meat cleaner tasting) Take a new razor blade and cut just below the skull bone all the way around the head (RUB the head hard with your finger, you'll feel the bone) make a slit at the dorsal fin and or break and remove the fin totally, grab the skin at the cut and pull down very hard while firmly holding the meat up behind the skin to keep from losing it pull the skin all the way down as if you are removing a sock. rip open the stomach and gut it, remove stomach meat and save. break off head at skull base and fillet with a very thin and flexible fillet knife you can clean 20 to 30 fish an hour depending on skill and size smaller=easier

Most definitely I'm readying my lines and replacing all my hooks now, actually it's all done, I just have to build a new hook board because I'm now running 200 hooks and my old board was to small. Season is getting ready to start soon, as so as I get a mess, I'll post a video on youtube, I'm not to fancy on writing these things here

Good catch- that's certainly true! People who fillet regular scaled fish do it the way you describe, basically performing a second fillet step to remove the meat from the skin and doing a bit of scraping. I like to keep the skin on my fillets when I clean that type of fish, though, so never do it. The skin is tasty.

Catfish, though, has slimy skin that should definitely be removed. The above mentioned technique should work nicely on thin-skinned catfish, but I'm much more used to skinning and cleaning wild-caught thick-skinned spiny catfish so defaulted to the standard order of operations without much thought. It's probably rare to skin farm-raised catfish; certainly I'd only done it once before. The technique described in my instructable is more similar to the dissecting techniques used on some types of lab animals when you specifically don't do anything that resembles filleting.

Next time I clean one of these farm-raised ones I'll definitely fillet the skin off last!